


hold me down

by wildcard_47



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Captain Crozier Has Some Thoughts, Cheering Someone Up With Sex, He'll Huff and He'll Puff and He'll Blow Your House In, M/M, My What Big Kinks You Have, Oral Sex, Prostate Massage, Rimming, Roleplay, Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 01:07:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16671865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildcard_47/pseuds/wildcard_47
Summary: Captain Fitzjames is in the grip of melancholy. Thank god his First knows just how to ease James's gloom. (A sort-of sequel to "undisclosed desires".)





	hold me down

Several weeks passed before Captains Crozier and Fitzjames were able to sit down again in _Erebus’s_ Great Cabin. These had been the cruelest and most difficult days of their voyage to date, save perhaps those immediately following Sir John’s loss.

Still adjusting to life as a teetotaler, such duties were excruciatingly demanding for Francis, but they were sorely needed to re-establish better relations with his crew and with his officers. Additionally, he found abstention from the whiskey offered newfound purpose and energy, despite the demands on his person.

Fitzjames, on the other hand, seemed tremendously burdened by comparison. Overworked as James was in the weeks prior to Carnivale, and further crushed by the needless loss of good men during that event, he had wilted under each new blow to their morale. Each day, Francis saw the stress tugging at the man’s very bearing – his shoulders near-permanently slumped and his words horribly tentative – lacking the easy confidence and good humour they had all come to anticipate from his company.

In fact, James was now so visibly altered and withdrawn that both Bridgens and Jopson had begun fussing over the _Erebus_ Captain like two clucking mother hens in the course of their duties, always offering up more tea or biscuits or chocolate in the vain hope that this melancholy could be eased through nothing more than vague pleasantries and food.

Damned weevil-infested hard tack wouldn’t cheer up the buggering rats.

But, seated at James’s left hand as they completed their reports, and still nursing the last dregs of strong coffee, Francis now imagined a myriad of ways he could calm the man’s nerves for a few minutes, at least.

In truth, he aspired to bring the telltale spark of sly humour back to his Second’s face, if only for an instant.

“Any more to report, then?” he asked to break the silence, and sat forward in his chair, stretching out his hands and arms over his head as if prepared to make his usual goodbyes.

“Infinitely,” came the quiet sigh. Fitzjames’s eyes flicked away from the page for a mere second before he turned back to his work. “Were I you, Francis, I should not feel obligated to stay and further witness such pitiful scribblings. Let me call for Bridgens so you may suit up and return to _Terror_.”

“Come now, man. What else remains to put to paper? You have already finished the inventory…”

“But I have not yet – ”

“And fixed our ever-unchanging position, and noted the day’s remarks, and determined all duties owed…”

“That may be true, but there are still – ”

Francis was swiftly running out of written materials to list. “And pieced up your Divine Service, as well as issued the ship’s weekly gazette…”

“Oh, you are fully aware I do not write a gazette,” mumbled Fitzjames, although a ghostly twitch of a smile played around one corner of his mouth. Sitting up, he scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Lord, Francis, even the ink refuses to bend itself to my will tonight. Is such mutiny not a tragedy of the highest order?”

“Undoubtedly so,” Francis had already risen from his chair, and stepped closer to James. “Though I wish you would not dwell on such petty slights. Only one of us may wallow in melancholy at a time, and I am reliably informed I have taken up all such morbing to date.”

Still clutching his pen in one hand, now dripping ink onto a piece of paper with no more than two sentences and a half-dozen scratched out words scrawled at the top, James turned on him a dead-eyed glare which could have cut through the ice, though there was no true meanness in his appearance.

“You’ll not get me to laugh tonight, friend. I must warn you.”

“Won’t I?”

After a slight hesitation, Francis reached down and covered James’s writing hand with his. Purposefully, as shy as a green girl encountering her first suitor, he rubbed his thumb across the fine bones of James’s downturned palm, and traced one fingertip over the man’s elegant fingers for just a moment, before gently plucking them up from the table. Keeping James’s hand loosely clutched in his fingers, he helped his second guide the pen back to the inkwell. Once they had deposited it here, he pulled James’s hand free from the instrument.

A searching, surprised flash had bloomed in James’s dark eyes.

“Francis.”

The _Terror_ Captain did not release his hand. “Perhaps I could coax forth a smile, then. Even one would do.”

Slowly, Francis traced a path downward, till his fingers twitched just beneath James’s cuffed shirtsleeve. When they brushed over the racing pulse in James’s wrist, he finally mustered the courage to look directly into the other man’s flushed face.

“You,” James swallowed hard. Wide eyes darted down to where Francis’s hands now encircled his wrist, and gently palpated weeks of built-up stiffness from fingers and thumb and other overworked joints. “Francis, you would still – ”

“If you recall, I once promised you a favor.” Francis brought that same hand up to his lips, kissing the pads of James’s ink-spotted fingers before nipping one digit into his mouth, dragging it down across his bottom lip and front teeth before kissing it again. At the intimate touch, James made a soft shocked noise in his throat, sounding for all the world like a startled rabbit emerging from the brush. “Did I not?”

“Yes,” whispered James after a moment, and swallowed again. “But it – Francis, I may – I’ll not be particularly – ”

“Peace, James.” Stepping closer, Francis traced a small pathway down his second’s still-extended arm, till he got to James’s ear, and could tease the tender shell of it with finger and thumb. At this new caress, James’s eyes fluttered closed, and he let out a puff of a breath, tipping fully backwards in his chair for the first time in days. “Allow me the liberty tonight, hm?”

“Mmph,” came the sighed response, followed by a slight gasp of breath. Half a second later, James’s eyes flew open, and he glanced down, surprise evident on his face as he beheld the new state of his trousers. “Good Lord.”

Grinning, Francis followed his gaze and saw that James – far from being disaffected by such tender ministrations – was already half-hard.

“Come and lie down,” he instructed the _Erebus_ Captain, and inclined his head in the direction of the cabin. “We shall lock your door.”

“I – I do not know if this is wise,” protested James feebly, although he allowed Francis to take him by the hand, pull him to his feet, and lead him into the Captain’s berth. He even allowed Francis to guide him toward the ladder of the bunk. “Francis – something could happen – Bridgens might – ”

“Be at ease.” Francis turned; secured the door. “All is well for now. And I have informed Mister Bridgens that we’re not to be disturbed.”

 _Unless a body’s dead or bloody dying,_ he had hissed to the steward in the outer wardroom, under pretense of searching for more coffee. But James did not need to know this. He could cede his many responsibilities for an hour’s time, at least.

Sighing, James slumped sideways against the ladder of his bunk, clearly unable or unwilling to protest this state any further. “All right. All right. I suppose you have me at your mercy.” After another moment, he loosened his tie, and cast it aside. “Shall I kiss you now?”

“Not just yet,” said Francis with a smirk, and reached out to tug at the tails of James’s waistcoat. “Take your kit off and in bed with you at once, you grumpy bugger.”

“God in heaven.” James rolled his eyes, but did as he was bade, nimble fingers darting across his buttons. “What a strop you are in tonight, dear Francis.”

Yes, _Francis_ was the one in the grip of a strop.

Snorting in obvious derision, Francis removed his own waistcoat and shirtsleeves, and toed out of his boots, till he stood ready in only his trousers, linens and socks. When Fitzjames had stripped down nearly to nothing, and finally glanced up, a question in his eyes, Francis jabbed one hand toward the bunk.

“Surely you’ll not just stand there forever, hm?”

James cast an imperious eyebrow at Francis’s choice of attire as he removed his linens. “Come now, man. You cannot possibly intend to wear all of _that_ whilst I’m bared to the bone _._ ”

“Oh, I bloody well do,” retorted Francis, and pointed to the berth this time. Merriment, now mixed with arousal and a jolt of anticipation, had curled low and warm in his stomach. “Now in you go. Insufferable git.”

“Honestly, Francis,” grumbled James as he climbed into bed, shivering slightly, now bare as the day he was born. Francis took particular delight in watching the ropy muscles of his lean, firm legs and rump contract and move as Fitzjames crawled up the bunk toward his pillow. Like glimpsing an _aos sí_ on the bank of a lough. “Sometimes you are absolutely incorrigible.”

“Well. I have been told some find such moods vaguely amusing.”

“Heaven only knows which man might take interest in such a thing.” Quickly, James settled in, and lay down on his back.

Stepping forward to light the lantern, and placing the extinguished Lucifer match to one side, Francis joined James on the bunk, now crouched over the man’s knees.

“Don’t leave me cold,” James whined with a visible shiver. “Put me out of such misery at once.”

Francis, ever conscious of comfort, pushed the mass of frozen blankets to the rail for a moment, and indicated that they should draw the bedlinens up past the rail and over themselves, held up by the two pillows at one end of the bunk and the bulk of Francis’s frame on the other. The single light from the lantern flame on the nearby desk made him think, very suddenly, of the light reflected in a ballroom from a hanging chandelier. Being surrounded by a soft, distant glow.

Apparently, Fitzjames had another experience in mind. “Feel like Red Riding Hood, trapped in grandmother’s bed.”

Producing a small tin of petroleum jelly from one pocket – and meeting James’s surprised gaze with a very toothy grin – Francis cocked a mischievous eyebrow at the words.

“Well, well. Then I suppose I have you entirely at my mercy.”

Dipping cupped fingers into the jelly, he rubbed his palms together for several moments before slowly sliding them up James’s bare stomach and chest, and all the way down his arms. James startled and then melted into the touch. After a few moments, his cock grew fully hard against his leg, curling gracefully up against the concave slope of his stomach.

“Hmm,” Francis sighed, as he trailed long, gentle strokes down James’s chest and stomach and back up strong legs, not yet allowing him the relief he sought by touching his cock. One hand trailed lazily past the _Erebus_ Captain’s knee, and paused halfway up his inner thigh. “Why, Captain Fitzjames, what long legs you have.”

“Dear god.” This interjection was ostensibly meant as a complaint, but James’s voice had deepened far too much to make it anything but a soft groan. “You wolf.”

Inspiration striking, Francis reached up now, rubbed slick palms over James’s chest and took both nipples in finger and thumb, plucking and teasing at each one until they stood up taut and proud, and each new ripple of his hands over this sensitive flesh made James shiver. By the time he skated one hand down to the base of James’s cock, and took it in a loose grip, slowly stroking up, James had begun to breathe heavy. Each exhale was visible in the air, little crystals of encouragement now melting into the air around them.

“And what a stiff prick you have, my dear Captain,” Francis whispered, as he continued to stroke the man past full hardness, each motion barely teasing. His other hand still toyed with one of James’s nipples. “Like a red-hot fire poker.”

“Mmm.” A dazed, unfocused look clouded James’s face. “Feels nice.”

“Ought to eat it right up.”

A short, desperate gasp escaped James’s lips, and the muscles of his stomach tensed with excitement as Francis bent his head, and shuffled as far back in the bunk as he could go without piercing the warmth of their small enclosure.

First, he pressed a firm kiss to James’s inner thigh, and listened with triumph as James’s breath hitched in his throat. When Francis parted his lips, and dragged the point of his tongue across the tip of James’s cock, the _Erebus_ Captain gasped in earnest, and his hips bolted up hard.

“Good Christ.”

Gently pinning James’s hips back to the bed, Francis did not speak, simply increased the pleasurable touches till he was sucking and bobbing on the man’s stiff prick like a well-paid harbour doxy, one hand gently curled around the base for added stimulation.

James was beginning to twitch and tremble. His legs kicked uselessly at the blankets. “Blast – that’s – oh, keep going.”

Francis glanced up, saw James worrying his lower lip between his front teeth, and increased the suction and the speed of his hand until he felt a full-body shiver rush through the man’s middle. Only then did he pause, relishing the soft whimper this coaxed from Fitzjames’s elegant throat.

“Sweet _Christ_ , Francis.” A wet, obscene pop echoed around them as Francis pulled away, mouth red and wet from the jelly as well as the little beads of clear fluid now welling up from James’s head. “When did you – h – how – ”

“A wolf must have some secrets, sir,” was all Francis said, in a very innocent way; this caused James to sink backwards into his pillow with a sputtered, breathy exclamation.

“Goddamn. You’ll not tease me so – so cruelly?”

“Don’t let’s blaspheme just yet, my dear James.” Francis slicked up one hand again, met James’s eyes in the dim light. “As your wolf has not yet gobbled you down.”

“Gobbled me – ” James’s skeptical retort turned into a full-throated moan as Francis ran that same hand all along his inner thighs, up over his balls, and then between his buttocks, in search of the opening here. “Oh, _damn_ your devilish – _ah_.”

“Mm,” sighed Francis with satisfaction, watching James’s mouth slacken and open in wordless delight as two fingers rubbed over this tender spot. Seeing him blush scarlet from the shock had his own cock twitching firm within his trousers. “You would like that, would you not? Letting your wolf work you open.”

“Yes,” panted James, fisting the blankets in one shaking hand.

“Then let him make a meal of you, my dear.”

On an impulse, and mainly because he wanted to provoke a visible reaction, Francis bent his head again, eased James’s cheeks apart with both hands, and licked a wicked stripe from his entrance just up to his balls.

Such obscene provocation coaxed out a near-divine reaction; James actually squeaked at the first swipe of Francis’s tongue across sensitive flesh, and every muscle in his body jerked stiff as a board.

“ _Sweetheart_ – ”

Four fingers flew to Francis’s crown, and fluttered here for purchase as Francis moved downward and swabbed the lower deck as thoroughly as a ship’s boy with duty owing, relishing the way James’s thighs twitched and trembled against his face throughout.

Once he got James wet and open, he pulled back and very slowly inserted one finger, studying James’s face all the while for signs of pain. When he was satisfied there were none, and the only discomfort stemmed from the absence of movement, only then did he thrust forward, burying the finger to the knuckle joint.

James hissed aloud as his hips bucked up. His eyes rolled back in his head.

“Francis, _please._ ”

“Not finished with you yet, my dear.” Francis pretended to be saddened by such desperation, although he could not keep the mirth from his face as he crooked one finger up in search of the spot that could make James writhe like a tropical serpent. His other hand brushed over James’s cock, mirroring the same way he’d pleasured Francis, so many weeks ago. “Don’t you want to know what big hands I – ”

“Oh, wait, wait,” wheezed James, every muscle in his body now locked as taut as if they were hauling a full sledge together. He trembled all over with the effort of holding back, and his right thigh bumped Francis’s elbow as his legs shifted restlessly along the bunk. “Please wait. Hm –  _Christ_ , I’ll not – ”

“All right?” asked Francis in a low, gruff voice.

James’s eyes were squeezed closed. For several seconds, he did not speak, simply took in and exhaled several deep breaths through his nose, mouth finally opening in a prayerful litany on his next exhalation.

“Not yet. Not yet. Not – ” another shuddering exhale, and he relaxed very slightly into Francis’s touch, having backed far enough away from the edge. _“Hell’s teeth.”_

“Too close? Or not enough?”

“Nnh,” groaned Fitzjames, visibly unable to string words together. “‘S – want t’last – ”

“Shhh. I’ll draw you out, then,” promised Francis, and stroked James’s thigh gently with his free hand before moving to brace that same hand on James’s stomach. “Let me do it.”

Gently, he began to thrust his finger in and out of James, purposefully hitting the much-desired spot over and over again, so the _Erebus_ Captain could focus on a building sensation elsewhere than the hot pulse in his dripping, aching cock.

“Mother’ve _God_.” James arched into the touch, desperate for more. “That’s – ”

“There, now,” Francis bent down, tongued at one of James’s nipples; his second growled and stroked one trembling hand through the back of his hair again. “I’ll taste you all over.”

“Goddamn.” James was unable to stay still, legs and hips vainly searching for better purchase. The air around them had turned thick and humid with desire. “Goddamn – ”

Francis pulled back, sucked a bruise beside the hollow of James’s throat, now, and then scraped his teeth up to a tender spot behind James’s ear.

His second actually whined in pleasure, one leg crooking fast around Francis’s back. “Please don’stop, don’st –  _ah_ – ”

“Yes, James.” Francis groaned into his ear, and sped up the movements of his hand. The sight of this man writhing under him in delight made him painfully needy to be stroked, but damned if he’d touch himself one whit before James went over the edge. Instead, he rutted slowly against James’s hip to find some measure of relief. “Lovely, James. So filthy and pretty. Should always look this way. Bloody gorgeous.”

By now, James’s entire body thrummed from need, and he was undulating against the bunk, causing each plank to creak and shift beneath their combined weight.

_“Oh, Francis.”_

“Next I would have you fully,” Francis whispered, and sat up by reflex to see James’s face; his second’s expression had cracked open into something raw and wildly blissful, imploring eyes now squeezed shut, tongue darting out to wet his lips or click out soundless cries again and again as his head tipped back into the pillows. “Get my cock in so deep – ”

With a high, choked noise, James stiffened and curled in on himself, legs and arms fluttering for purchase amid the blankets as he rode out a wave of pleasure – but he did not spurt yet, merely shuddered and shook for nearly half a minute before collapsing back into the pillows as before, gasping for breath, still searching for more.

“‘S – so good,” James whined, as Francis pulled away, wiped off his fingers, and began to tug him back to full stiffness, relishing the way James’s eyes rolled back in his head a second time. _“Goddamn.”_

James’s hips rolled like a stormy sea and his back arched and he thrust into Francis’s fist like a wild animal as Francis continued to touch him, quickening the pace of the hand on his cock whilst rubbing every part of James’s bare body he could reach with the other. He could not stop grinding against the man’s hip. And James was beyond speech, now, murmuring and grunting and gasping low in his throat as Francis worked him over.

He was so desperate for resolution that he nearly knocked Francis off the bed this time, blindly rutting down the bunk till his head tipped against the mattress and one foot accidentally punctured their warm cocoon, both legs threatening to dangle down the ladder.

Francis was forced to release his grip to tug the bedlinens back into place, and urge them back into position again.

“No,” gasped James at the loss, both palms flying to his stomach and below, tugging clumsily at his cock with one hand.

“‘S all right,” Francis soothed. “I’ve got you.”

With an amused huff, he helped James back to the pillows; once James had gotten settled again, and Francis was no longer in danger of collapsing arse-first into the floor, he batted James’s hands aside, and took him in one fist again.

Before long, he was straddling one of James’s thighs, pulling at his second’s cock quick and fast with one hand and pleasuring him deep with two fingers on the other, till James’s entire body shook with pent-up tension and he could do nothing but thrust and pant and huff, bucking so hard Francis could hardly keep seated, could hardly keep control of his own wits. Beneath them, the bunk shrieked and cracked and groaned like a tumbling ice shelf.

When James finally came, shuddering apart with a sharp, broken cry; the first stripe painted him all the way up past his face, yet still he spurted until his stomach and chest were messy with it. By the time his body relaxed, and he sagged backwards into the pillows, flushed and slack-jawed and trembling all over, he looked so absolutely _fucked_ it was astonishing. Who would believe that the handsomest man in the Navy, always polished to perfection, could be brought off to such obscene debauchery?

“Made a bit of a mess,” Francis murmured first, rather proud, as bleary blue eyes roved over James’s bare body.

With a start, he realized he had spilled in his own linens thanks to the desperate friction of James’s thigh; a wet patch now spread around his left hip.

Below him, James was still so out of sorts he appeared not to know what had just occurred, glancing down at his own body as if Francis had performed some sort of magician’s illusion. His voice, when he spoke, was a low, half-drugged slur.

“I – I’ve jus’ – come?”

Raising an eyebrow at James’s witless gawp, still holding the man’s softening cock in one hand, Francis let out a cackle. “Think you’ve got spunk in your hair.”

“M – hair,” repeated James dully, with a delirious exhale. “Wh – ”

“Likely have to change the bed.”

“Bed.” Glancing left, and then right, as if he’d forgotten where they were, James met Francis’s eyes with a touch more lucidity, and suddenly began to giggle, still drawing in great heaving breaths. “‘S on my – bed?”

Francis’s grin widened. “And your face. And nearly everywhere else.”

“God in heaven,” James only giggled harder, eyes glittering impishly in the low light. “Christ. ‘S all over. I’ve nuh – never – come like that before. Good –  _fuck_.”

“Here,” said Francis cheerfully, moving up the bed to lick a particularly large spot from the top of James’s cheekbone. “Let a wolf clean up his mess, then.”

“You – utter – _beast,_ ” yelped James through fits of now-manic laughter, but he submitted to Francis’s mouth and hands one final time before their cocoon became too oppressive and they were forced to fling the blankets off their heads; once freed, they gasped in frigid lungfuls of bracing Arctic air until the usual scratchings of frost collected around their now-shared bunk.

Legs and bodies still entwined, both yawning now, they were far too sated and warm underneath the blankets to even consider moving, and within minutes, they dropped off to sleep, with hardly another word spoken between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically I giggled to myself for like a week while writing this. Raise your hand if you think Bridgens and Henry gossiped about this development like two old women for the rest of the evening. And [enjoy the earworm](https://youtu.be/Olo923T2HQ4?t=114) I've had in my head for two days! #blessedandthankful #whosafraidofthebigbadwolf


End file.
